Volume 48 – Number 6

Nov/Dec 2017

The Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery of China and South Asia at The British Museum

Celebrating Shiva in the Chola-mandalamTwo Pictorial Stone Panels in the Art Institute of Chicago'Chaekgeori: The Power and Pleasure of Possessions in Korean Painted Screens'Nagasaki, Maps and Trade in the Pacific RimWang Tiande: Transforming Art by CollectingThe Sunkaraku-an: A Teahouse for Philadelphia

This November, the Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery of China and South Asia at The British Museum will reopen following a refurbishment. Now, paintings and textiles can be displayed alongside inorganic objects and the narrative has been brought up to the present. We interview Jane Portal, Keeper of the Department of Asia, Stuart Frost, Head of Interpretation, and Pippa Nissen of Nissen Richards Studio about the gallery’s design and the collections’ new display. Conservators Jin Xian Qiu and Carol Weiss discuss the work done on the Chinese painting Gathering of Immortals by Zhang Chong for the gallery, and curator Imma Ramos introduces some Indian Ragamala paintings, which can now be placed on view.

We also introduce a previously unpublished group of Chola bronzes, which entered a European private collection in 1962 and are presented here by John Guy of the Met. Jin Xu reveals how the carvings on two Northern Wei pictorial stone panels in the Art Institute of Chicago are changing the way we look at early medieval Chinese art. Katherine Anne Paul considers a type of Korean folding screen known as chaekgeori, which depict treasured possessions such as books and are currently the subject of a travelling exhibition, and Richard Pegg uncovers the stories of trade embedded in various maps of Nagasaki.

For ‘Artists as Collectors’, we interview the Chinese artist Wang Tiande. And for ‘Art in Context’, curator Felice Fischer relates the story of the Sunkaraku-an teahouse at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.